Homecoming
by SageSloth
Summary: In a freak accident, Johnny and Dr Doom are pulled into an artificial black hole and disappear. A year later Johnny crash lands back to earth, but is he the same person he was before? A re-write of my old unfinished fic.


The lab was dark, lit only by screens and flashing lights on monitors. The cup of coffee in Sue's hand was too hot to hold, but she gripped it tight. She deserved the pain, she thought, even enjoyed it a little. When she finally put it down next to Reed she felt her palm start to cool and the pain inside her heart return once again.

'Thanks, honey,' Reed said, not taking his eyes from the screen in front of him.

'You're welcome,' She realised that was the most they had spoken in several days, but did nothing to keep the conversation going.

She left the lab quickly, brushing her knuckles against her still hot palm, and found Ben in the kitchen buttering a piece of bread. By the look of things he was putting together a sandwich with various vegetables, meats and condiments.

He turned when he heard her, 'Hey, Suzie.'

She flashed a weak smile, but as soon as it appeared it was gone again and she crossed the kitchen into the open-plan living room and sat on the floor in front of the large window. The transparent glass covered almost the entire wall, providing an unobstructed view of the bustling city below. It had never felt so empty, she realised, than it had the last year. Everyone went on with their business, laughing, fighting, loving. Everyone had moved on, except them. How could things ever be the same?

Ben watched her with careful eyes. He'd learnt the hard way that if he held on too tight things broke, and that applied to people's hearts too. Abandoning his sandwich for the moment, he followed her across the room and knelt beside her with a tired groan.

Her blue eyes were fixed on something intangible in the distance, way past the city and all the people that lived there. Perhaps even past all the people that lived.

'It's not the same, huh?' Ben sighed, feeling his stone heart throb.

She shook her head and sniffed, 'It never will be.' Her voice broke into a sob and she pressed her hands to her face, burying her tears.

Ben pulled her gently to him, knowing that his exterior didn't make the softest pillow, and rocked her as softly as he could. She didn't seem to mind, pressed her cheek against his chest as he body convulsed and jerked as she cried.

Reed didn't say anything as he watched his wife cry. There was nothing he could say. For months now all he did was work and watch his family break apart. He was never useless, there was never nothing he could do. He was a scientist. An inventor. He found solutions to unsolvable problems even before it became his vocation.

But this…

How do you fix this?

An alarm blared suddenly from inside the lab and Ben and Sue turned quickly, finding Reed in the kitchen.

'What's that?' Ben asked.

Reed's face had paled and he turned on his heel and ran back to the lab. Ben and Sue scrambled to their feet and followed him.

'Reed!' Sue cried, 'What is that?'

Reed's fingers clacked against a large keyboard, the screen above him showing a radar with a wide red blip pulsing across a map of the city.

'Something's entering the atmosphere,' Reed said with a grave face.

'You mean from space?' Ben queried.

'No, from the bathroom! Yes, of course from space!' Reed snapped.

'Is it Kree?' Sue asked.

Reed shook his head, 'No, but it's fast.'

'Hostile?' Ben's shoulders started to rise.

'Not sure,' Reed started to type in sums to further analyse the radar, 'the heat signature is—' his head jerked up suddenly and he broke away from the desk.

'What?' Sue asked, 'Reed, what is it?'

'Nothing.'

'Do you think it could be—'

'No.'

'But what if—'

'Sue!' Reed snapped again and then regained his composure with a cooling sigh, 'I'm sorry, but it's not him. It's not Johnny.'

He almost didn't get the name out of his mouth. It brought him physical pain to recall the one they had lost and once he had spoken he felt almost all life drain out of him, needing to brace himself against the desk.

Johnny's name hadn't been spoken for at least six months, half as long as the time they had spent without him. It was too painful to talk about him now. Too terrible to remember what had happened.

**1 Year ago**

'_Victor!' Reed screamed inside the glass tube, his voice muffled by the thick walls, 'You don't know what you're doing.' He banged his fists against the glass._

'_Quiet, Richards,' Victor snapped, hardly disconcerted, 'You've always tried to hold me back. But not this time.'_

_He was right about the second part. There was no escape for Reed, the trap having been perfectly created just for him without even a tiny air hole that he could slip an appendage through. Oxygen was pumped through chambers at the top of the tube, but the openings were closed so fast and so sharply once the oxygen was pushed through that he would lose a limb if he tried to escape through them._

_Sue lay on the ground in front of Victor and his great machine, tears rolling down her cheeks as she watched the beginning of possibly the end. Ben and Johnny weren't conscious. They had fought Victor hard but came out the losers in this instance. It was all going to wrong and all Reed could do was watch._

_Victor no longer cared about defeating the Fantastic Four, or even world dominance. He didn't want to control the world, he wanted to end it and didn't care who got caught in the crossfire._

'_Please, Victor,' Reed screamed, having resorted to begging, 'don't do this! The revenge you're looking for doesn't lie in your death or that of anyone else's. You need help.'_

'_Save it!' Victor growled, 'the time for talk has long passed. It is time now to welcome the dawn of a new age.'_

_He pushed one of the buttons on the size of the large ring in the centre of the room and it started to turn. Slowly at first and then so fast you could hardly make out which way was up. In the centre of the rings there formed a tiny little circle of light and as Reed watched in horror it started to feed. _

_The black hole drew in everything in its reach; paper, furniture, pipes from the walls. Sue felt herself starting to slide forward and scrambled away, digging her nails into the floor and reaching for anything that she could hold onto, but it was no use._

'_Sue!' Reed screamed and pressed himself up against the glass wall, but he couldn't get to her/_

_Sue's body was dragged up into the air from the ground and towards the black hole, but before it could swallow her up a bright flame burst through the air and threw her sideways. She crashed into a desk and tumbled to the ground as the flame wrapped itself around Victor and both were consumed by the black hole._

'_Johnny, no!' Reed felt his insides break as he screamed harder than his body was capable. _

_Sue pulled herself up to her feet and watched in horror as the circle shone brightly and disappeared. Johnny was gone._


End file.
